Mbeki's ban on Aids drug challenged in court

The South African government's refusal to allow widespread distribution of an anti-retroviral drug to pregnant mothers is "unreasonable and irrational" and could cause "thousands of ... avoidable deaths" among children, a lawyer for Aids campaigners and paediatricians told Pretoria High Court yesterday.

They are challenging President Thabo Mbeki's refusal to accept a western, drug-based solution to South Africa's Aids crisis. Marumo Moerane, a lawyer for the state, said the government wished to adopt a cautious approach to the drug nevirapine. The medicine has, in the past, reduced transmission from mother to child of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which leads to Aids.

Mr Moerane said South Africa's poor health infrastructure could not support a massive programme of anti-retroviral distribution and women who had taken nevirapine were still transmitting the virus that leads to Aids through breast milk. "To give maximum benefits to pregnant women and children, you have to have phased implementation," he said. "We are trying to be responsible."

Every day, nearly 200 babies are born with HIV in South Africa and the national rate of infection among pregnant mothers is 23 per cent, said Gilbert Marcus, the campaigners' lawyer. The UN says approximately 4.7 million South Africans, about 10 per cent of the population, are HIV-positive.

The company that makes nevirapine, Boehringer Ingleheim, has offered it free. South Africa has only a few pilot sites.

Earlier, about 200 demonstrators marched to the South African health ministry. Their banners read: "Save our babies" and "Government save us and our children". They sang: "Thabo Mbeki, What you are doing is not right."

The case continues.